


decay will feed the bloom

by rarmaster



Series: YWKON [11]
Category: Tales of the Abyss, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: (starring several other characters in bit parts; will tag major ones later when they get added), Coping with trauma, Emotional Support Bastards, Gen, Platonic Soulmates, XC2 AU, YWKON, abuse recovery, it's all about the healing babey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29325354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: As it turns out, starting a new lifeisn’tas easy as killing your abuser and getting the hell out of dodge.Or: Jade and Mythra, over the years.(YWKON)
Relationships: Jade Curtiss & Hikari | Mythra
Series: YWKON [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1222385
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. spring comes in green, and green, and green

**Author's Note:**

> housekeeping: title from the ever wonderful [shitty horoscopes (iv: resolutions)](https://musterni-illustrates.tumblr.com/post/106768778601/shitty-horoscopes-book-iv-resolutions-its) once again. this post is just kind of the jade&mythra mood
> 
> housekeeping 2: though this is a YWKON fic, the only other fic you need to read for context is _[the Artificial Aegis Project](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24709642/chapters/59724136)_. or you could go into this with no context. up to you!
> 
> housekeeping 3: this is going to be a oneshot collection and i'm going to use ao3's handy "rearrange chapters without breaking any of their urls" feature to make sure oneshots stay in chronological order. so the chapter order is going to get shoved around a lot, but once there's actually more than one chapter, i'll put a cheatsheet here. WHEW. that's probably a lot of housekeeping. i'm sure you want to read the fic already.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which: Midori. (or, 13k about meeting your dead driver's daughter completely by chance!)

“If you’re bored, you can always skip this class,” Jade says, and Mythra immediately sits the fuck upright and tries to look less like she’s dozing off. Sitting right next to a wall in a small classroom _does_ make it pretty tempting to doze, though. The wall’s _right there_ and there’s not enough people in the room for their pre-class chatter to be overwhelming.

 _Regardless,_ just because politics isn’t exactly Mythra’s class doesn’t mean she wants to skip it. Besides.

“You really think I’d leave you here alone? Wow, and I thought you knew me,” Mythra shoots at Jade.

“I’m _just_ saying…”

“ _I’m_ just saying that if you and Mr. Fuck-haust over there get in another debate I don’t want to miss it.” Yes, Mythra pitches her voice lower so the student in question can’t hear their favorite bastardization of his name. Her eyes dart his way—he’s having a lively debate with the friend he always sits with, and isn’t paying attention to her—and then towards the door, just because someone walked in. Not one of their classmates, which Mythra knows because there’s barely thirty students in this class, but that’s none of her business. “If you weren’t studying before class even starts I wouldn’t be so bored, you know,” she continues, for Jade’s attention.

“I’m compiling notes,” Jade counters. “You could very well keep talking to—”

“…need something, Dr. Uzuki?” finishes the voice of another student, and in unison Jade and Mythra snap their heads up.

The woman who just walked in. Now that Mythra’s looking—Architect, she barely understands how human familial resemblance works, but that’s the same hair color, at least. The fuck. _The fuck._ She turns to Jade, leaning forward in her chair so she can better get a look at his face without him needing to quite take his eyes off of the woman, but he doesn’t look at Mythra at all.

Actually.

He and the woman who just walked in have locked eyes across the room. The whole class seems to hold their breath, but neither Jade nor the woman makes a move.

Well, outside of the climbing spike of ice ether.

“Jade,” Mythra hisses.

“Midori?” Dr. Tsong, their professor, asks, and the woman breaks eye contact with Jade. “You’re here for the SBS papers, right?”

“Oh, yes,” the woman—Midori??—says, and finishes her walk across the room to take her papers from Dr. Tsong. “Sorry.”

Jade is still not looking at Mythra and the temperature is steadily dropping. She steals his notes and his pen to scratch out a message for him that she can’t fucking say aloud.

“You and Jade know each other?” Dr. Tsong asks as Mythra writes.

“Oh, it’s been quite a while since we last spoke, I’d be surprised if he remembers me,” Midori deflects. A dig? A way out? Mythra can’t care because _Jade about freezes their desk over in his fury._

“ _Jade_ ,” she hisses at him, tugging his arm and all but shoving her short little message in his face. _I cannot pretend to be an ice blade,_ it reads, because she fucking can’t. Even if no one here could read her ether lines—proudly declaring she’s light—even if she could trust the single other blade in this class to keep his mouth shut, _they’ve already told everyone in the room she’s light._ Jade grimaces at her note, or maybe he was already grimacing. The emotion bleed is shaky in the way that suggests Jade isn’t wholly present. Mythra does her damnedest to convey _don’t make me drag you out of this room_ with a glance.

Jade smiles. Something in Mythra’s core curdles.

“Believe me, Midori, it hasn’t been quite that long,” Jade says, and Mythra bites her tongue against the bile in her throat, because it has been _years_ since she last heard his voice this insincere.

“Well,” Midori says, and Mythra gives her credit for the fact her expression remains fairly neutral despite Jade basically telling her about the murder he committed. “If you want to speak to me some time, Jade, you can find my office—”

“Wouldn’t it be better to talk now?” Mythra interjects, because fuck it, fuck it. Jade doesn’t even turn to her, but thankfully the emotion bleed doesn’t speak of disapproval.

“I can certainly delay class for a few minutes if you’d like,” Dr. Tsong offers.

Jade gets to his feet. “That’s alright, I’ll just sit today out,” he says. Mythra starts grabbing his notes and shoving them in her bag so they can get moving and also because his notes will survive being crumpled better than they’ll survive being _frozen._ Thankfully she doesn’t have to herd Jade towards the door, he’s already making his way out, and he _does_ pick up his own bag as he goes.

They beat Midori out of the classroom, but they’d been sitting at the back, so that’s to be expected.

“So,” Midori begins, but now that she’s here Mythra starts walking.

“Outside, outside,” she commands, shoving at Jade so he starts moving. “If it gets cold out there at least less people will notice.” Probably. Architect. Jade pretending to be human is all well and good _except when he does this._ “Jade who even is—”

“Daughter,” Jade says, one word but just the one is plenty.

“Daught—” Mythra chokes on it as she repeats it back, nearly stumbling over her feet. She looks at Midori—following them, which is nice of her—and then pushes at Jade again, mostly just a bid to keep herself steady. “Who the _fuck_ would let that man _fuck them_?!”

“Mythra,” Jade says.

“Jade!!”

“You didn’t have to say it like that.”

“I’m suffering so suffer with me!”

At this point they have reached a few benches between buildings—not quite far enough away but far enough that they shouldn’t be interrupted. And if they’re gone before the hour is up, they shouldn’t run into anyone they know while Jade gets himself together. Mythra doesn’t have to shove Jade into the bench under the tree because he’s already collapsing into it, one hand kneading his forehead.

“We… _could_ go talk in my office,” Midori asks.

“Not unless you want snow on your furniture,” Mythra says.

“I’m _not_ that bad,” Jade protests.

“Uh-huh.” Mythra doesn’t feel the chill too much, since Jade is driving her—not quite ice-blade tolerance for cold, but definitely more resistant to it than humans are. Midori is hugging herself, though, and maybe that’s just because she’s uncomfortable, but honestly. With the amount of ether Jade is outputting Mythra will be surprised if every blade within fifty feet isn’t wondering what the fuck. “Hair,” she tells Jade, who protests but not in the way that suggests she needs to stop, so she moves behind him to wind his hair up in a fast bun, getting it all out of his face so he’s nearly unrecognizable.

“Mythra,” Jade says.

“Give me your jacket.”

“What do you need _that_ for?”

“The goal is to get you to look less like Jade Caesar, the student who is definitely not a blade, here.”

“You’re sitting right next to me, I’m not sure how well it’s going to work.”

“Jade.”

“We really can talk later,” Midori interrupts. Jade and Mythra look up at her in unison, and after considering their expressions for a second, she sighs. “Though I suppose you’d rather rip off the bandage, wouldn’t you?”

“I would, yes,” Jade says. “Sit down already, Mythra, you being here blows any cover you were attempting to give me.”

“ _Fine,_ ” she says, but she plops down next to him on the bench, crossing her arms. Midori sits on the bench next to theirs, sat at a right angle. Mythra should address her, probably, but she doesn’t know where to start with that so she bugs Jade instead: “I cannot believe you knew he had a daughter and didn’t _say anything_.”

Jade’s answer is clipped. “Didn’t expect it to come up. Didn’t know how old the photo was.” He rubs at the bridge of his nose. “Not like I met them this lifetime.”

Oh. Of course. _Of course._

“Jade…” Mythra says, for lack of anything else to say. She reaches for him—he’s got his hands out of his lap, so she puts a hand on his knee instead. He’s cold enough that she can feel it through his pants, which isn’t great, but he _hasn’t_ started snowing, so. Could be worse.

“Sorry…” Midori says, gently. “But… What do you mean _this_ lifetime? I thought sure you remembered, since you looked at me like… _oh._ ” All the air seems to expel from Midori’s lungs at once, and all the color drains from her face. Mythra supposes it’s not that hard of a leap to make, especially if Midori knows anything about what her father was generally like, but—

The intensity with which Midori slaps a hand to her mouth and nearly doubles over still takes Mythra by surprise, and even Jade stops kneading his face to look up in alarm. Midori physically trembles with the effort of—something Mythra doesn’t quite understand. “Architect, _Architect_ ,” Midori spits, muffled by how tightly her hand grips her mouth, and then seems to become aware of the attention fixed upon her.

“Sorry, sorry, _shit,_ I don’t—” Midori swallows, then releases the grip on her own mouth so that her words aren’t quite as muffled. “Sorry. I don’t… I don’t really know what to say…”

“Well, you could start by explaining,” Mythra says. “That’s generally a reasonable place to start.”

Another time, Jade might tell her to be nice, because sometimes words are hard. But Mythra can feel his distrust for this woman, the daughter of the asshole who hurt them so much, and she thinks Jade’s patience is probably thinner than her own is. That Jade hasn’t spoken is honestly a mercy, for Midori.

Midori laughs, weakly. “Yes, yes,” she agrees. “I should explain, but please understand…” Halfway through those words, Midori seems to realize herself and reconsider. “Actually, I suppose no one would believe you, even if they cared.” She laughs again, straightens partway, clutching her arms together. Her eyes lock with Mythra’s. “But I suppose the both of you are familiar with secrets that couldn’t reach my father.”

A chill goes down Mythra’s spine, and it’s not the kind of chill that she can blame on Jade. The alarm he’s been feeling flares acutely though, and, yeah, mood.

“Uh,” Mythra says.

She looks to Jade. He looks to her.

A lot is communicated in that look. The discomfort that Midori knew that, but also a curiosity—and Jade’s curiosity is a dangerous thing. He wants to know more. Mythra figures that it probably makes sense that Midori understood this specific thing, given what Citan was like, and… maybe there isn’t a reason to distrust someone else who was hurt by that man. Based on how Jade’s expression shifts, he understands.

“Sorry, again,” Midori says, and as one Jade and Mythra turn to consider her. “It’s normally not…” She breaks off, but it’s less the fear of sharing a secret, and more a realization that she shouldn’t start there at all. “I can feel things about other people,” Midori explains. “I can know things—but it’s usually feelings, like… Like an emotion bleed, except I can tap into any person within ten feet of me.”

Oh, holy shit, Mythra thinks. That’s a weird power. Especially for a human to have, and Midori’s not even done _talking_.

“I’ll feel what they feel, especially if it’s very strong, and… _Architect_.” She flounders, here, flounders the flounder of someone who hasn’t had to confront what they’re currently confronting in years, maybe decades. “I haven’t felt _thoughts_ in years,” Midori says, sounding helpless. “I haven’t—please understand I didn’t mean to, and I don’t. I don’t really know how to describe it, but—"

“…I was thinking extremely loudly about how your father murdered me,” Jade finishes, in hushed tones.

Midori sags, something that is somehow both relief and horror. “Three times, yes, _Architect_ , three—” She breaks off and shakes her head, clapping a hand to her mouth again.

…Mythra’s starting to see why this was a secret Midori had to keep from her father. It’s not like she was ever in a hurry to elaborate to Citan just how much Foresight was capable of, if you pushed it. Jade sends a look at her, sideways, confirming her thoughts. Citan wouldn’t have had any qualms about squeezing everything he could out of Midori’s abilities, even if she _was_ his daughter. People were tools to him as much as blades were.

And then Jade’s curiosity spikes, dangerously.

“Midori,” he says.

Mythra sends him a warning look that he ignores in favor of making eye contact with the woman sitting across from them. Midori looks extremely overwhelmed, still, but she nods at Jade’s request.

“Do you know how long your father was driving me?”

Midori hesitates. Mythra sees her eyes pinch, and then finally Midori drops her hand from her mouth again. “Since… before I was born, I think.”

Mythra struggles to do the math, but she straight up has no idea how old Midori is, and she’s terrible at reading human ages, besides. Either way, this is a dangerous path.

“Jade,” she warns, but he isn’t listening. Maybe it’d be better to just let him get it over with.

“How old were you when he died?” Jade continues, voice distant.

Midori frowns. “Somewhere around fifteen, I think...”

Ice water floods the emotion bleed. Mythra tightens her grip on Jade’s knee. Fifteen years… That’s at least five more than Jade had counted. For a driver to have a blade that long… for a driver to have a blade that long _and keep murdering the blade_ — It’s honestly a miracle Jade _isn’t_ snowing. The bench is forming a layer of ice, though, and the grass at his feet is starting to die from the sudden shock of cold. 

Midori stands quite abruptly. It’s fast enough Mythra finds her free hand reaching to summon her sword, which she feels immediately ashamed of. ( _High tension situation, though! It makes sense she’s jumpy!!_ ) She feels a little better that Jade also clearly has tensed as if to attack as well.

“Sorry,” Midori says. “I’m… if you want to keep talking, we can, but I at least need to- I am going to go walk over there,” and she gestures with her hand, to a spot that Mythra figures is probably more than ten feet away, considering, “and I am going to… Just give me a minute, okay? Architect. _Architect._ I’m fine, just… I’ll be back in a minute.”

Midori walks. Mythra stares at her retreating back longer than she’d like to think about. Instead she thinks about Midori’s hair, long like her father’s but worn in a regular high ponytail that falls down her back instead of tied at her neck and thrown over a shoulder. She shares none of her fashion tastes with her father, wearing a dark grey blazer over a knee-length dress of a deep color that Mythra thinks is blue, and not green. Mythra thinks that if she hadn’t heard Midori’s full name, she never would have realized…

Of course, she is avoiding the actual problem.

“You good?” Mythra asks Jade, in a hushed tone.

He turns and sends her a look that says _what would make you think I am?_ which honestly speaks of him doing much better than he could be. Architect. Fifteen years, _minimum…_

“You wanna talk?” Mythra asks.

“Later,” Jade says, which is fair.

“Here.” She lifts her hand from his lap and holds it out for him to properly take, which he does. They haven’t done this in… a long time, but they only really need to when his ether output is extremely out of control for more than a few hours, or in times like _these,_ where they don’t have a few hours to wait for it to calm down on its own. And, you know, extremely don’t want to blow Jade’s cover. They already had to forge enough documents to get him into this school to begin with. They don’t need to get him kicked out because he froze the place.

“I’ll watch Midori,” Jade says, before Mythra can even ask.

“You sure?”

“I trust you to, I do,” Jade insists, which Mythra is grateful he clarified. “But you being calm right now is more important for this working, and if you’re watching her…”

He has a point.

“Okay,” Mythra says, and closes her eyes, taking herself through the breathing exercises Malik taught them. She’s usually too restless for them to work, but she just needs to keep her ether pulse normal for a few minutes so Jade can regulate his own to match hers.

“If this doesn’t work, we can always leave, speak to her later,” Jade says. Which like, good to know he’s okay with that, but also.

“Jade.”

“You don’t think I can multitask?”

Mythra does not open her eyes to shoot him a look ( _because of course she knows he can but maybe he shouldn’t with this_ ) but she thinks very hard about it, which alone might get her point across. Emotionally, she can feel him settle in, and she can hear him take a deliberate breath. She resumes the breathing exercises, inhaling deeply as Jade shifts his ether flow so he’s feeding it to her directly instead of just outputting it willy-nilly. She directs it to letting Foresight run calculations just so she’s using it, and promptly ignores the calculations, which is something she’s gotten better at over the decades. If something was gonna happen soon that _really_ mattered, it’d actually ping her.

She’s so caught up in that that she doesn’t really know how much time has passed, just that the school’s bell tolls the quarter hour, meaning it’s been like twenty minutes since they first stepped outside. Uh.

“Midori’s still there,” Jade answers before she can ask, apparently having felt her confusion and made an assumption. If he wasn’t usually right about the questions she was going to ask, she’d be more mad about him answering them without waiting for her to speak. “I’m not sure if she’s waiting for us, or needed more than a minute to calm down, but…”

Not something they’re gonna figure out without asking. Foresight’s good for events, not motivations. Regardless, Midori can wait. It’s not like she’ll be hard to find again if they don’t speak to her now. 

“Better?” Mythra asks. 

“Absolutely not,” Jade answers, which. Does he have to be like that? Mythra supposes she _can_ feel that his ether output is—Okay, definitely still extremely high for a normal blade outputting at normal levels. But it’s pretty low for a stressed Jade, and is really only going to result in it being kind of cold around him. That might not _last_ if Midori throws them another curveball, but. “Ah, here she is,” Jade says, sitting up straighter, tugging his hand out of Mythra’s. She’d be mad if he didn’t follow this up by immediately shifting his leg so their ankles pressed together.

Midori waves as she approaches, her smile apologetic.

“I’m thinking…” Midori says, slowly, as she reaches to pick up her papers from the bench ( _Mythra must have totally missed her setting those down, whoops_ ) but doesn’t make to sit down. She chews on her words for another moment. “We can continue this conversation now, if you wish, but I fear we will all have to block out our schedules for the rest of the day for it if we do. I am willing, but…” She trails off, and shrugs, her smile still apologetic, eyes pinched in the way that suggests even if she’s willing she’s not quite looking forward to it.

Mythra turns back to Jade, because she has no strong opinions on the topic. Well, she’d love to knock this out now, _but_ skipping the rest of their classes for the day is not a decision she can make alone, and Jade cares way more about that than she does. ( _Though if they’d actually offer her a degree instead of only letting her audit classes, maybe she’d feel different! She’ll never know!_ ) Jade hesitates as he considers it, but based on his expression Mythra’s pretty sure he’s just trying to remember what they even have classwise for the rest of the day, and weighing how much he cares.

“Or if you’d rather never speak to me again, that’s fine too,” Midori interjects, quiet in a way her father was never. “I only request that you allow me to speak to you once more after this. I’ll have to talk to my mother first, but, we- we were left a sizeable sum of money when my father died. I’d like to split it with you.”

Holy shit. Holy _shit?_ Mythra first looks to Midori in disbelief, then to Jade as excitement takes her. _Free money._

“How much?” Jade asks, and, okay, yeah, actually maybe they should know that before Mythra gets too excited.

“About fifty million gald,” Midori says, with the anxious smile that suggests she realizes how much that is.

“That… he left?” Mythra asks, just to be sure. 

“That they’re willing to give us, I presume,” Jade answers, and Midori nods in confirmation. 

Mythra lets out a long breath. “Hoo. That’s a lot of money.” It’s more than ten times what Jade still has stashed away. “Hell, we could start our own college with that.”

“We could buy Malik a new place,” Jade whispers, distracted.

“We could— _Jade,_ ” Mythra says, as what Jade says hits her.

“What?” He looks at her, oblivious, which. Mythra is not even going to unpack right now but makes her think very loudly about the fact she’s one-hundred percent sure Jade _didn’t_ just start using Malik’s last name to fuck with him like Malik is halfway convinced. “We don’t actually have the means or reason to start our own college, so as much as I appreciate your lofty desires we’d be better off funneling the money into long term plans instead of blowing it all on something we don’t even feel _that_ strongly about.”

“No yeah fair, I just can’t believe your first thought was _Malik_.” Like, she can believe it, but.

“The bar was falling apart when we got there and hasn’t gotten any better since, and Malik was considering moving locations _anyway_ ,” Jade argues. “Paying for a new place wouldn’t even put a dent in that sum of money. Besides,” and here, Jade’s smile becomes sharp, vindicated, “I can think of very few things pettier than spending Citan’s money on a more stable, safer place for blades like us. He’d hate it.”

Mythra hates how half of Jade’s financial decisions are based solely in pettiness. She hates even more how much the pettiness convinces her.

And, like, she has no problem with helping Malik out. It’s probably the least they owe him, and he’s doing _really good things._ She’s just… that really was Jade’s _first_ thought, wasn’t it?

“Fair point,” Mythra says, “but we should also save some for memory patch research. Core chips aren’t cheap.” 

“Oh I know,” Jade agrees. “How much did you say again, Midori? Fifty million?”

“I might be able to talk my mother into parting with more,” Midori says.

“No,” Jade interjects, “I can negotiate with Yui just fine.”

It takes Mythra a second to realize that by Yui he means Midori’s mom. Citan’s wife. Ew, Mythra thinks, yet again. She wonders if Yui’s a real piece of work, too. She might have been, to have been willing to marry the kind of man who regularly murdered blades to wipe their memories.

Midori fidgets, and Mythra feels shame, briefly, then squashes it. She’s perfectly entitled to her thoughts! It’s not her fault if Midori can hear them! She doesn’t even know that Midori _did,_ seeing as Midori literally said earlier that hearing thoughts was a rarer thing for her. Anyway.

“You wanna keep talking, Jade? I can’t remember what other classes we have today,” or, she can, but not what’s important in them.

“Oh, yes,” Jade says. “I’d rather not skip any more classes, the rest we have today could be relevant for core chip production. If we can pick this up later, Midori, we have tomorrow afternoon free.”

Midori thinks for a moment, then nods. “That’s fine by me,” she agrees. “My office is in Gettings, room 203. We don’t have to talk there, but it’d be easiest to meet there, I think.”

“Agreed,” Jade says.

There’s no… actual goodbyes. There's just Midori smiling that same smile that looks more like a grimace for how much her face is pinched in apology, and then she walks off, and that's that. It leaves Mythra feeling strangely… empty? Unresolved? Hard to say. 

Jade turns to look at her, eyebrows quirked upward in question. "What do you think?"

The question takes her by surprise, though if she'd been paying attention to how Jade's concern touches the emotion bleed, it wouldn't have. Well, other than she isn't entirely sure how he expects her to answer.

"About what, Midori?" At Jade's nod of confirmation, Mythra shrugs. "I mean, she seems fine?" Their conversation wasn't long, but Midori had none of Citan's attitude. If anything, Mythra hates that they're still haunted by his ghost, even _here_ , but that's not really Midori's fault. "Willing to give us money, that's plenty good in my book."

Jade levels her another look. Mythra shrugs again. 

"Oh no, I was reminded Citan exists," she jokes, exaggerating her despair. He rolls his eyes. She laughs. "I'm okay, really. I'm interested in getting to know her, I think. Or at least giving her one more conversation. Curious, I guess." She tilts her head at Jade. "You aren't?"

Jade sighs and shakes his head, buying time before his response by pulling his hair down from the bun. It had been a really shitty bun, so fair. "I am," Jade says. "Curious."

"Are you, like, _okay?_ "

"It's a lot to process," Jade admits. At least he's being honest. The emotion bleed feels… normal. There's a lot going on in there, an unease that churns under everything else, but it's a _quiet_ kind of unease, the kind that Jade probably has to sit with and Mythra can do nothing about. But then, it _is_ a lot to process. At least fifteen years… If Mythra thinks about it, she just gets angry. She's not sure how Jade feels about it—The emotion bleed is only good for sharing emotions, not their reasoning.

"But," Jade continues, and Mythra puts aside her thoughts, "you are right in saying Midori isn't deserving of our anger. So far the only thing she's done is share a name with her father, and that's not her fault, is it?"

There’s not really a need to respond to that, so Mythra doesn’t. When Jade gets to his feet, she does too.

“We have an hour before next class, right?” she asks, fishing for what he wants to do next.

“We do. I think I’m going to walk around the edge of campus first, though.” Work some of his energy out, he means, but doesn’t say. The intent of giving himself something concrete to do until his ether calms down is also implied. Jade looks to Mythra. “You coming with?”

Which means he doesn’t want to go alone.

“Duh,” Mythra says. _You don’t have to be alone,_ she doesn’t say, but based on the way Jade’s core sings in resonance with hers, he gets the idea.

\- - -

Midori Uzuki doesn’t know a lot of things about her father. Often, she wonders if it would be better if she knew less.

She knows he was never home. She knows her mother stopped sending him letters when she was ten. She knows he sent her a single birthday card on her twelfth birthday, and not for a single birthday before or after. The card wasn’t signed. It was addressed in handwriting that wasn’t his.

She saw him enough times that it would be difficult to accurately count how many, but few enough times that she thinks if she assigned one to each finger she wouldn’t run out. She might not even fill a hand. Either way, she only saw him enough times that she remembers Jade—but then, Jade is a hard man to forget. After all, who could forget a blade who hated their driver as vehemently as Jade hated his? When you spend your life able to listen to the whispers of other’s souls… things like that leave an impact on you.

Oh, right.

The clearest fact she knows about her father is that her mother warned her, very firmly, that he was never ever to find out about her powers.

“Wonder why,” Midori says to herself, dry, as if the answer didn’t sit in her memories, the shape of a blade who should not remember her—( _but she always knew Jade hated her father enough to kill_ )—a blade murdered thrice by her father, _her father._ The thought ‘ _at least thrice_ ’ bounces around in her head unbidden, residual horror from when Jade processed it had been fifteen years still sitting in her throat, and…

A knock on her office door. Midori looks up from the papers she was supposed to be grading. “Come in,” she calls.

The latch clicks, door pushed open. Midori has a sense of who it is before she even sees them. Blades and drivers generally just sing so much louder to her, emotion bleed broadcasting things twofold, especially when they are near each other. And in her entire life, she has never met a pair who think as loudly as Jade and Mythra do.

The first thing Midori notices about them is that they both have their hair up, which is a sharp contrast to yesterday. They have matching braids sitting in front of their left ears, but Jade’s hair is up in a complicated bun, and Mythra’s is somehow held entirely in one loose braid. It’s not a _lot,_ but something about the matching braids pings as important to her mind, used to picking up facts she shouldn’t know, used to understanding when something is significant.

The second thing Midori notices about them is that they both look uncomfortable. She can hazard a guess as to why, but the exact details are fuzzy—feelings are the only constant to her ability, explanations come at random.

Jade hesitates before he sits in either of the several chairs before her desk, and Mythra hesitates with him. “Should we speak here?” Jade asks.

“We can speak elsewhere,” Midori offers, especially as Mythra sends Jade a look that reads of Mythra thinking Jade would be more at ease if they talked literally anywhere else. Midori should… try and pull her ability back, actually. She takes herself through the old meditation of closing windows against the noise. It helps. Dampens the strength of it so it’s easier to tune out.

Jade glances at Mythra, then looks back to Midori. “I’m more worried about privacy than comfort,” he says, the latter likely to argue with Mythra. “The building’s currently empty other than us, but do you think that will change any time soon, Midori? The last thing I want to do is blow my cover.”

“We should have at least an hour,” Midori answers. She canceled her office hours this afternoon specifically for this conversation, and Lyra—her only coworker with an office close enough to eavesdrop—has classes for another hour.

“Jade,” Mythra says. It means something, but what it means can’t be heard past the window Midori closed.

“Unless we want to invite her into our apartment, which is a whole twenty-minute walk from here, this will do. Who knows who could be listening if we simply ‘hang out’ elsewhere on campus.” That decided, Jade takes a seat. Mythra glares at him for a moment, but follows his lead, depositing the bag she was shouldering to sit at her feet. “You haven’t spoken about me to anyone, have you?” Jade asks.

The question takes Midori aback, but. “No… One of my students asked—the one you shared Dr. Tsong’s class with, Joseph—but I told him it was none of his business. Why?”

“Because if you told anyone I knew your father, it’d blow my cover entirely,” Jade answers, deadpan. It takes Midori a second to remember that blades aren’t generally allowed to earn degrees. They can audit classes if their driver is enrolled, but…

“Alright,” Midori says, because there’s no reason to out Jade, here, “if someone really presses for an answer, I’ll say we were childhood friends who fell out of contact when we were still young. Fine by you?”

Jade shrugs. “How would you say we knew each other?”

“Went to the same school, or something. I don’t really believe people are going to press this thoroughly…”

“Yeah, give him a break,” Mythra laughs, rolling her eyes. She leans back in her chair, arms crossed. “He likes having all of his bases covered. It’s obnoxious.”

“It’s saved our lives more than once,” Jade counters.

And there’s… a twitch of something there, a clamor of noise that Midori can’t make out because she’s not listening, doesn’t have the right to listen. But Mythra’s smile twitches, eyes moving away from Jade. Jade doesn’t move at all.

“What do you teach, anyway?” Mythra asks.

Oh, an easy question. “Information,” Midori answers. “Information sciences—I rotate which classes I teach with the other professors in the department, depending on the semester.” She _could_ tell them about her thesis, but that’s not the question Mythra asked, and besides:

“You know, I’m surprised you didn’t major in psychology,” Jade comments. “Considering your skillset—”

Midori laughs, short and sharp. “Yeah, no,” she says. “I spend enough time in other people’s heads, whether I want to or not. I didn’t need to make it my career.”

“You mentioned you don’t tell people about your ability anyway, right?” Mythra interjects.

“I don’t,” Midori agrees. “It’s not… My mother was always afraid of…” She hesitates here, for several reasons. It’s a piece of her she’s not certain about sharing—though for the fact she has known the pair in front of her for barely twenty minutes in full, she feels more comfortable sharing with them than any of the other friends she has ever had. Still, it’s something she’s only confided in with her mother, before. And there’s something else, as well. “Forgive me,” she says. “But would it be worse, if I used his name? I’m getting tired of…”

Tired of drawing a relation between herself and a man that, with each passing second, she grows more and more certain she despises. It was bad enough, when he wasn’t around and she barely had the concept of having a father at all. It was bad enough, when she first started college, being the daughter of the man who purportedly created Tethe’alla’s artificial Aegis ( _whether or not that’s true—well, she’ll have to ask Jade and Mythra_ ). But now… after what she learned yesterday…

Jade and Mythra blink at her in near unison.

“I mean, it’s not gonna change the fact we’re talking about him, so like,” Mythra says, shrugging.

“I certainly can’t blame you for wanting to distance yourself from him,” Jade agrees. Of course he agrees. Midori doesn’t need her ability at all to know why.

“Thank you,” she says, and then continues: “The point is, my mother feared him—” Funny that she asks permission to use his name and then doesn’t bother, but then, who else could they be talking about? “—finding out about my ability, and so I got in the habit of keeping a secret. From everyone. Not that it was difficult, even people who did find out had trouble believing it, but…”

She’s not sure she has words for what keeping such a large part of yourself secret for your entire life does to you. Meeting Jade’s eyes, she’s not sure she needs words.

( _the thought sits in her throat unbidden:_

 _who would he tell about the murder? who would take his word for it?_ )

“If your mom was worried about you, why didn’t she just leave him?” Mythra asks, and there’s something dangerous in her tone—but then, light is the kind of justice that does not leave much room for grey.

Midori shrugs. “They were separated all but legally,” she answers, having wondered the same question for twenty years and having made her peace with it. “I think it was just too much effort for the both of them to bother with the paperwork.”

She’s barely finished saying the word _paperwork_ when Jade and Mythra both laugh, a simultaneous, same-note, bitter thing.

“Yeah, that tracks,” Mythra says. Jade adjusts his glasses. “Did she even like… love him?” Mythra continues, face scrunched like the words make her want to vomit.

 _She loved his money,_ Midori thinks. _She loved that he’d deposit glad into her bank account monthly without any complaints._ “I don’t know,” she says aloud.

They don’t get any further into that conversation because there’s a knock on her door.

“Dr. Uzuki?” asks a voice, and it’s—instant.

Ice cold panic followed by a boiling disgust, chest-clutching dread as the room grows cold. Mythra’s hand flies to land on Jade’s arm. Midori clenches her teeth and hisses against the strength of it all; closing your windows to noise, after all, only does so much when someone presses their face against the glass and screams. She bows her head and rubs her temples with one hand, trying to find purchase in the howling storm.

The door latch clicks, and that too, is instant. Midori lifts her head and drops her hands; she’s not sure she can school her face, but she can at least make her discomfort not totally obvious. Mythra turns her head away from the door to hide her expression. Jade’s face instantly goes blank, a neutral smile plastered against his lips.

“Camille,” Midori says, considering her student.

They immediately flush with shame. “Oh sh—sorry,” they say, rapidly, “I guess you’re busy. I just had a question about an assignment, but, it can wait uh, ‘til later?” They’re already moving to close the door.

“It’ll have to be tomorrow.”

“Assignment’s due tomorrow, though.”

“Then you can have an extension on the deadline,” Midori says. “I’m not available today.”

“Okay, okay.”

Camille retreats, closing the door behind them. Midori counts to eight in her head then lets out a long breath. Windows boarded up against the noise, as Jade and Mythra wrestle their storm. Count up to eight again as she gets to her feet and moves for the door. She reaches for the hook on which she keeps signs to hang on her door, finds the sign she wants missing. She opens her door to check and, sure enough, _office hours canceled today_ hangs on it, which means Camille simply ignored it. Shaking her head in exasperation, she closes the door and then _locks_ it this time. Architect.

“Alright. That shouldn’t happen again.” Midori sits back down. She busies herself with shuffling her papers just a moment, giving Jade and Mythra time to collect themselves.

She knows—so little about the man who fathered her, so little about Citan, so little about what kind of man he was. But less than an hour she has spent with the blade he was driver to for at least fifteen years ( _and who knows how long, for Mythra, the number two sits in her head but was that two years or two deaths by Citan’s hand_ ) and the picture is clear enough. A man so despised just his name, unexpected, can completely ruin their moods. Ruin. Ha! As if terror had not touched Jade like a live wire for just a second.

But how hard must it be, not just to live your whole life keeping secrets and lying, but knowing that an ounce of truth could be a death sentence? How much harder, then, for a blade whose virtue is truth?

The question of Mythra’s memories bounces in her mind as well, because she is not a flesh eater, she has no reason to remember—but a thought brings an answer, a memory patch, memories kept between deaths and it _was_ two deaths and…

Midori buries her face in her hands for just a moment, palms pressed to her closed eyelids until it hurts, until spots dance in the darkness of her vision. Jade and Mythra have gone very, very quiet, but the room remains very, very cold. It’s spring. She has no jacket today, nothing warmer. She tries to think about the cold and not the thoughts screaming against her skull, pawing to be let in.

Is it harder, because she cares? Can she not block them out, simply because she _wants_ to know? It is not her place, not to learn like this, and the throbbing pain in her mind makes her reconsider just how badly she wants to know, but. Curiosity sits in the pit of her gut and festers there. A hunger to know the man she saw few enough times she remembers photographs of his face better than his actual face. Why? Why does she care? He did nothing for her. He did nothing for anyone—unless you count paying her mother’s bills and whims.

It hurts, though. In a place she can’t name, can’t define. A hole in her chest she doesn’t need filled but still stings. A child does not necessarily need a father to love them, not if they have someone else; but that does not change the fact her life still seems to revolve around his existence, which isn’t fair because _she doesn’t even know him._

She doesn’t even know him.

And now she’s having a breakdown in the middle of her office, in the middle of a conversation, like a real adult. Beautiful. (Not.)

“Sorry,” she says. She should drop her hands from her face but cannot find the courage to, not yet, not ready to face the consequences of what probably counts as a huge faux pas, considering how little she knows the two blades sitting before her, as well. “Sorry,” she repeats again.

“There’s nothing for you to apologize for,” Jade says, surprisingly gentle.

“You want us to go?” Mythra asks.

Midori breathes. She breathes. She breathes.

“Do you _need_ us to go?” Mythra asks. “We can.”

It would probably be better for her still-throbbing head, though at least the noise has been cluttered up enough with her own feelings that it’s hard to make out anything from the buzzing clamor. Which… still headache inducing, but at least she’s not intruding on anything she shouldn’t, anymore.

“Midori,” Jade says, a weight of concern in his voice that she’s almost entirely unused to. “If you need us to give you space, just say the word.”

“It’s…” Midori begins. She drops her hands from her face and takes a deep breath, opening her eyes. Jade and Mythra regard her with open concern, ( _though Mythra still clutches Jade’s arm_ ). That was basically permission to do whatever she needed to right now, though she would do this without hesitation had it been students sitting in front of her desk instead. “Hold on,” she says, and gets to her feet again, making her way to the corner of her office where her record player is stashed.

The record she wants to listen to is already in place, because it’s the only record she ever regularly listens to in her office. An hour of jazz played on piano, unobtrusive but still grounding, the opening notes already soothing just for how often she has listened to them; a melody to latch onto instead of all the other noise.

“If this is going to bother you, give me about five minutes,” Midori says to her guests, her back still to them. The first song on the record is closer to eight minutes, but still.

Mythra makes an _I don’t know_ kind of noise, and Jade says: “It’s not bothering me.”

So Midori breathes and sits back down. She already feels a bit more settled.

“You know I was wondering,” Jade comments, as Midori sits, “you _are_ the only professor I’ve met that keeps a record player in their office—though I suppose I haven’t hung around the music department.”

It gets a laugh out of Midori. “It’s useful for finals season,” she admits. That’s when it sees the most use, at least; after all, it’s very difficult to talk with stressed-out students about their papers and exams when their stress makes you stressed. The day someone invents communication that doesn’t need to be done face-to-face and is faster than writing letters, Midori will be grateful.

“Sorry,” Jade begins, but Midori lifts a hand and shakes her head.

“It’s alright,” she tells him. “It’s not your fault I can hear your emotions.” _You were well within your rights to respond like that, besides,_ she doesn’t say, the words too heavy on her tongue for a blade she has just met, regardless of all the things they have in common. She could tell him the truth, which he would surely appreciate, both for being the truth and because she’s certain he’s as tired as she is of lines of relation being drawn between Citan and themselves. But that seems like too much, too.

So, instead.

“Was… he really that horrible?” she asks, because she wants to hear it, and not just come to the conclusion.

Jade’s expression goes tight. Ice creeps up the metaphorical windows Midori has shut in her mind, cold, but the noise is lost to the sound of the music. “He could have been worse,” Jade says.

“He was _shit_ ,” Mythra says, more emphatically. She sends an annoyed look at Jade, then back at Midori. “Only cared about himself—that’s a bad enough trait in any person, but in a _driver_?” Mythra shudders. “Being stuck in resonance with a man who doesn’t even _care_ about you—Architect, I can imagine only a few things worse than that!”

Jade hums, what might be agreement. It’s the hum, Midori thinks, of a man who can imagine several things worse but—she puts a stop to that thought before it goes too far. That’s not what matters.

“You didn’t know him that well?” Mythra asks, and then continues: “I mean, I guess he died when you were young?” The expression she makes suggests she has no idea whether or not fifteen is considered young for humans. “Wait, you said he and your mom split…”

Midori nods. “I saw him once a year, maybe,” she answers, “and never for long. So no, I don’t know him well at all.”

“Lucky,” Mythra grumbles, all air and no real bite.

Jade’s expression remains unreadable.

Midori chews on her next question for a moment, letting her thoughts ground themselves in the rise and fall of the piano notes floating out of her record player. She still feels uneasy, but she thinks that’s her own. What else is there to ask? Does she really wish to know Citan as well as Jade and Mythra do? It would probably be better if she didn’t, and simply learned to make peace with the ache in her soul—an ache she had already made some sort of peace with, aching afresh mostly because the _possibility_ of knowing more sits before her, now.

Better questions to ask, though. Less about him, more about his legacy. Things that won’t hurt know, things that actually bother her more than the lack of a father in her life.

“Can I ask a question? Or several, I suppose. There’s a lot of things the news said about Citan, after he died, and I want to know which are true.”

“Probably none of them,” Mythra says.

Jade nods. “She’s right, but… anything in specific?”

“Did he actually make Tethe’alla’s artificial Aegis?” Midori asks.

The returning laughter is instant, annoyed.

“ _No_ ,” Mythra says.

“He did not,” Jade agrees. “The name of the woman who did is Myyah Hawwa—and as far as I know, she made Sylvarant’s as well.”

“Hey, Mom and Dad helped,” Mythra interjects, but Jade ignores her. Midori doesn’t want to—very few blades call anyone mom _or_ dad—but there’s a slightly more pressing part of this question.

“Sylvarant didn’t make their own Aegis?” Midori presses.

Jade shakes his head. “I don’t think so, no. I’m nearly positive they stole one of the two Myyah made for Tethe’alla.” There’s a lot he doesn’t say in that, a lot that Midori can feel, but doesn’t touch. The only thing she gets is the word _twins,_ before the music drowns out the rest and… Yes, that would explain it, wouldn’t it?

“Incredible,” Midori says, for lack of anything else to say.

“Unfortunate,” Jade says.

Mythra finally pulls her hand away from Jade so she can cross her arms over her chest, turning her nose up. The desire for action screams in her. Midori tunes that out, as well.

“Anything else you wanted to know?” Jade asks, and Midori thinks he really means to answer any question she asks. She doesn’t know what to ask, though. The part of her that aches to know more about Citan cries with the voice of a neglected child but the adult in her knows there is nothing more to know about him that she’ll be _glad_ knowing.

But there are some things about Jade and Mythra she’s curious about.

“Yes, actually,” Midori says. “What are you in college for?”

Jade opens his mouth, but Mythra beats him to it.

“Jade’s got an insatiable thirst for knowledge and is taking _three degrees,_ I had to talk him down from five, which is a bonkers amount not even he could pull off.”

Jade sniffs and adjusts his glasses. Mythra just shoots him a look—loving and exasperated.

“Which degrees?” Midori asks, because it’s only polite.

“History,” Jade says, “Computer Science, and Blade Biology. Had this university a track on Blade Neuroscience, I would have taken that instead, but that seems specific to Meltokio University, and—” He laughs, sharp and bitter, “—I think not. And I’m taking as many classes in Ether Studies as they will let me.”

Midori feels her eyebrows climb slowly into her hairline. That… is an extremely specific course load.

“Ether Studies and Computer Science, personally,” Mythra adds. Her face says she knows that she’s only auditing the courses and isn’t actually going to get the credit, so Midori keeps her mouth shut. “Ether Studies is fun, I just wish they’d give me credit since I’m literally handling half the in-class demonstrations.”

Midori doesn’t say anything about that. Instead she asks: “Any specific reason you decided to pursue these specific degrees?” because that’s a more useful choice of words. The university laws about blades aren’t something Midori has any control over. ( _And Sylvarant is generally more lax than Tethe’alla; last she heard, Tethe’alla wouldn’t even let blades into classes if their drivers weren’t also taking them._ )

Jade and Mythra share a look that speaks of discussion before a secret shared. Midori gives them a moment, zeroing in on her music again so she’s not tempted to pry where she shouldn’t.

“Mom and Dad had a memory patch they developed,” Mythra answers, and Jade leans back, like he’s content to let her explain. “A way for blades to keep their memories even if they die. Which would be really useful, if only we could figure out how to apply it to blades without highly specialized equipment that we’ll probably never get our hands on again.” Mythra shrugs. “We’re thinking core chips, but it’s going to need a lot of modification.”

There’s a lot, implied in those few sentences, even without Midori’s abilities. She doesn’t need to ask why they care about this memory patch, and she doesn’t need her ability to tell her, either. It makes perfect sense.

“That sounds wonderful,” Midori says, “Though it is a little out of my expertise.” She wishes it wasn’t. She wishes she could help. “Your parents…?” she begins, in question, because honestly she wants to know more about the people who actually worked on the artificial Aegises.

Mythra and Jade exchange another look. Jade shrugs, a cadence of _up to you_ that Midori doesn’t even need her abilities to read.

“Klaus and Galea,” Mythra answers. “They’re… well, Tethe’allan government is going to pretend they never existed, but Meltokio University probably still has records of their thesis project— _me_.” She smiles, a cautious pride. “We’re still in contact with them, but…”

“Once again, they were trained to work with highly specialized equipment,” Jade finishes. “And I can’t help them come to a solution if I only vaguely understand the specifics of what they’re discussing, hence the degrees.”

Neither of them say what the History degree is about, but Midori gets the sense they aren’t going to. She suspects, for whatever reason, it was Jade’s first choice. Maybe she’ll ask him about the why, some other time.

“Oh,” Jade says somewhat suddenly, eyes fixed on the clock. “Mythra, it’s almost three. Were you skipping soccer practice today or…?”

“Oh shit,” Mythra says, quietly, also scowling at the clock. Her body moves like she’s about to get up. She looks to Midori, then to Jade, then back to Midori. “I mean, we were basically done here, right?”

Jade also looks to Midori. Midori supposes that’s fair.

“I have no reason to keep you,” she says. Would she like to get to know them better? Yes, she thinks. Does that have to happen today? No, it doesn’t, and it’ll only happen if they want to reciprocate.

“I’ll stay behind a second to finish solidifying things,” Jade tells Mythra, smiling her direction. “It’ll take five minutes, I’ll come find you after.”

Apparently that’s enough for Mythra. “Cool,” she says, hopping to her feet and shouldering her bag again. “See you.” She shoots Jade a fond smile, waves at Midori, and then not-quite-but-almost runs out the door. At least she shuts it behind her.

Mythra gone, Jade levels his attention back at Midori. It’s… a dangerous kind of look, at least in that there is a lot of weight behind it. There’s not nearly enough noise for Midori to pick up—drivers alone sing only half as loud when they aren’t near their blades.

“I thought you said you were free this afternoon,” Midori says, curious, before Jade can talk.

“Oh, they moved practice on Mythra last minute,” Jade answers, with an idle shrug. “Now, you said you were going to contact your mother about that money?”

Figures. “I sent a letter with the mail this morning,” Midori tells him. “I should get a reply within two weeks.” Maybe three, depending on postage. The mail is fairly reliable, but the weather isn’t always, this time of year. “Did you want to meet with her, or just want the money? Because you don’t _have_ to meet with her. I can pass money between the two of you.”

“Mm…” Jade’s attention flickers towards the door—actually, his head turns too much for that. An obvious tell that he wishes, perhaps, he had Mythra here for this. “I think I’d like to speak with her,” he says, after a moment. “I can’t say the same for Mythra until I’ve asked her, but she doesn’t have to. I can very well speak with Yui on my own.”

“Okay,” Midori says. “Would it be weird for you to meet at my house? I’d suggest meeting in public, but…”

“Listening ears and loose tongues.”

“Something like that.”

Jade shrugs. “Meeting at your house is fine by me,” he says. “I’ll check in with you two weeks from today for an update? Same time?”

Oh, he’s thorough. “Mm, I canceled office hours for today, so… You could, but I might have students.”

“When are your office hours, exactly?”

“2:30 to 3:30. And then I teach a class at 4.”

“Oh, sorry for keeping you.”

“No, we’ve got an hour yet,” Midori answers, waving a hand at him. She doesn’t say that she canceled said class in anticipation for the conversation today. Jade doesn’t need to know that. Actually. Whether she should blame it on her ability, or her own intuition about the man who never cared enough to act as her father… she knows Jade maybe _does_ deserve to know that. “And I canceled class, besides.”

Jade blinks at her, instantly confused.

“You didn’t have to—”

“This was a once in a lifetime chance meeting, Jade, it was the least I could do for you.”

He sighs in the exaggerated way that means he must intend her to see it, then fiddles with his glasses. “Sometimes, I am astounded by how stupid humans are, when they care about something. All you had to do was tell us when you wouldn’t be available and we would have arranged around you…” He fixes her with an expression she can’t read ( _once again: without Mythra, he is much quieter_ ), and then shakes his head. “But I appreciate it, I suppose. And can’t blame you for taking a personal day to process all of this.”

At that, he gets to his feet.

“Two weeks from now, before your office hours, how does that sound?” he asks.

“Fine by me,” Midori agrees. “And Jade? Thank you for being willing to talk to me.”

“Oh, it was no problem at all,” he assures her. He hesitates like he might want to say something else, but decides against it. “Goodbye.”

Once he’s gone, Midori leans back in her chair, face lifted towards the ceiling, eyes closed. She has a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings, that she’ll need to sort through sometime on her night off. But for now, she lets the piano notes from her favorite record roll over her, and she breathes.

\- - -

Midori’s house is of a modest size; three bedrooms, which isn’t large, though certainly much larger than one woman needs. Then again, Jade supposes he’s used to living somewhere rather small; or at least, condensing all he owns into one room. The upstairs of a tavern isn’t much larger than living quarters on a military base, after all. It’s just homier. The apartment he and Mythra rent while they attend college is perhaps the largest space he’s lived in that’s entirely his ( _well, his_ and _Mythra’s, but that’s still different from a tavern that regularly sees strangers_ ). Midori’s house isn’t cluttered, it’s just well lived-in, and has the accumulation of stuff that Jade suspects anyone with the space and time to accumulate said stuff would eventually end up with.

They don’t get a tour of the house, exactly, since Yui is already sitting at the dining room table, greeting them with avid promises of fancy wine she bought for just the occasion. Introductions are otherwise short and somewhat awkward—akin, though Jade wouldn’t have the words for it, to being at a family reunion with people you haven’t seen since you were too young to remember them—seeing as they all know each other except Mythra and Yui. Something in Jade’s core curdles when Yui greets him with familiarity that he cannot return. He kills it and moves on.

Yui must be in her seventies, if Jade’s math is correct, and her hair is greying to prove it—though it shows in only strands of grey shooting through dark hair. She keeps it short enough that even Mythra would have a hard time getting a braid to stay in it. Her face is beginning to wrinkle with age, and… and Jade stops, before he thinks too hard about how much she and Midori share, because then he will have to think about the parts of Midori that do not belong to her mother, and that’s not something he _should_ invite to haunt him.

Dinner is some pork and rice dish that Jade doesn’t think to ask the name of, served with the wine Yui brought, which Jade himself refuses. He’s not sure what the night has in store for him, but he’ll feel more comfortable facing it sober. Mythra sends him a look and… they haven’t _quite_ perfected the ability to communicate without words, but they’ve gotten pretty damn good at it after twenty years. She doesn’t need his permission to drink, of course, but he gets the sense she’s asking less for permission and more asking if he’d feel more comfortable if she were sober too. A shrug of his shoulders and a relaxed face should convey that he doesn’t mind whichever way she picks, so long as she’s not so shitfaced he has to carry her home. After all, Jade _really_ doubts that Yui will be as horrible as her husband was, but the fact she married him at all still speaks of a lot.

They talk of trivial things for most of the dinner, Yui curious about what Jade and Mythra are doing in college, which Jade is dodgier about than he was with Midori, and Mythra follows his lead. Yui seems perfectly happy to talk about herself, as well—not that she’s up to much of anything other than living a comfortable retirement off of Citan’s fortune, and Jade tunes out the rest of the finer details. Mythra bumps her ankle against his under the table, a reminder that she’s there. Jade sighs and gives up the charade.

Midori clearly doesn’t regularly suspect guests in large numbers, because her table is small and square, with each of them sat at a different end. Jade sits across from Midori, in between Mythra and Yui. To Yui, Jade turns.

“You know,” he says, conversational. “I’m surprised you even agreed to meet with me, Yui. If I were you, I might not want to talk to my husband’s murderer.”

Yui scoffs, instant. “Are you kidding? I know exactly what he did to deserve it. Besides, I’d be lying if I said the day I found out he was dead wasn’t one of the happiest days of my life.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, but Jade zeroes in on _I know exactly what he did to deserve it._ He does what he can to keep himself from leaking ether, but if there’s a chill, well. “Did Midori tell you?” he asks.

“Oh, no, I just…” Yui hesitates.

“You knew?” Jade isn’t sure how to feel about the possibility that she did.

“I had a hunch, a- a suspicion, really.” Yui admits. “You forgot me, once, and…” She hesitates again, twisting her wine glass between her fingers. “He had a blade before you, you know? I don’t… I don’t remember anything about her, really, it’s been so long. But one day he showed up and she was gone and you were there and I figured—oh, you know, it’s not _that_ strange. Sometimes blades die and their drivers can’t handle the thought of not being remembered, so they pass the blade on. Citan never especially struck me as that kind of man, but at the time I thought… well, who am I to judge how he grieves?

“And then… And then you forgot me,” Yui says, eyes fixed on the rim of her glass. “And things no longer added up, but I…” She sighs, heavy, then lifts her glass to take a drink from it. “Midori was so young at the time, and I couldn’t—”

“I understand,” Jade interjects, mostly because he doesn’t want to hear it.

And maybe it’s a good thing he did, because Midori looks extremely uncomfortable and Mythra—well, there’s no tells on her face or in her posture, but the emotion bleed spikes violently with something Jade doesn’t quite recognize. It’s sharp and ugly, the taste of fresh pain on an old wound. He doesn’t dare draw attention to it by asking her.

“I’m sorry,” Yui says. “I should have—”

“I understand,” Jade interjects, again, sharper this time. And he does. What could she have done to save him that any of his friends couldn’t have? And unless she intended to condemn a different blade to his fate, she would have had to kill Citan; and she would not have been any more exempt from the law than Jade was.

Midori gets up and moves to her kitchen, under the pretense of refilling her glass of water, but Jade notes the distance she deliberately puts between herself and the rest of them. He breathes, slow, and tries to rein in quite how strongly he’s projecting his emotions. Mythra balks at the sensation—he feels her balk, feels her discomfort, but he sends her a look. He knows why they leave the emotion bleed as open as they can, relishes the clear feeling of Mythra, full and unstifled, as much as she relishes being able to feel him. But. For Midori, the look he sends her says, and she sighs and follows suit. The ugly feeling jangling in her core doesn’t get any less ugly, but it gets quieter, touched by shame, which she also tries to push down.

Yui opens her mouth like she’s about to apologize again, so Jade cuts her off; not necessarily a pleasant topic, but at least it should only be unpleasant for him, and they _are_ questions he’s been dying to know.

“How long was it, before Midori was born, that Citan resonated with me?” Jade asks. Mythra kicks him under the table. He ignores her.

Midori continues to linger in the kitchen. Yui considers her glass for a few seconds, face scrunched up, and Jade begins to wonder if the three glasses of wine is starting to get to her. “Five years, I think,” she answers. “Somewhere around there.”

Jade was expecting it, but it’s still like a whack to the face. His own glass of water frosts over, and from the look of it, Mythra’s does too. Oh well, not much he can do about that. Twenty years. _Twenty years._ And… at least one more death than he counted. Frost becomes ice. Mythra doesn’t kick him, this time, but her ankle presses against his. He feeds her some of his ether.

“And you said he had another blade before me? Just the one?” Jade asks, eyes remaining fixed on Yui.

“I,” Yui says, and then horror crosses her face. “You know, I don’t know. There might have been… I didn’t see him often at the time.” She looks at Jade. “You think there were more?”

“He implied as such to me,” Jade says.

“…me too,” Mythra adds, her tone like knives.

Yui drains her glass of wine, then reaches immediately for the bottle to pour herself a fourth glass. Something in Mythra snaps.

“Why the hell did you marry him?” Mythra demands. She doesn’t quite jump to her feet, but Jade knows it’s a near thing.

Yui sighs. “Mythra, you don’t want to know the answer to that question.”

Mythra leans across the table, past Jade towards Yui. Jade leans back. Midori continues busying herself in the kitchen.

“Yes I do, actually,” Mythra hisses. “Because I cannot possibly fathom any redeeming qualities that man had that would make _anyone_ want to marry him, let alone _fuck_ him.”

Yui shakes her head repeatedly. “I refuse to have this conversation. I refuse,” she insists. “I promise you do not want to hear my answer. I will tell you that we married young. Younger than we should have. Younger than I think anyone should. But I’m not—That’s all you’re getting from me.”

Mythra gets to her feet. “This is stupid,” she says, and drains the rest of her wine. “I’m—I’m done.”

She looks to Jade. Jade looks at her. A conversation passes in those glances. _Do you want me to stay / not if you don’t want to / will you be fine without me / for the little time I intend to stay, yes._ Mythra sets her glass back on the table and makes for the door. It opens and closes behind her with no further fanfare.

Jade feels that she doesn’t go far, just loiters around what must be the edge of Midori’s lawn, based on the distance. Seems reasonable.

“Jade, I really am…” Yui begins. Jade holds up a hand to stop her.

“I don’t want to hear it,” he says. He gets to his feet as well, because there’s no point for him to linger. He asked Yui what he wanted to ask of her. He only feels bad leaving Midori after such a short time. “I think I’m going to go, too,” he says. “The food was wonderful, Midori. Sorry for intruding.”

Midori doesn’t cross the kitchen to bid him farewell, but she does turn to send him a smile. She doesn’t look upset. Just tired. “No, I expected this, I think,” Midori says. She doesn’t look at her mother.

“I think we all should have expected it,” Jade agrees. He’s not sure the answers he received were worth the effort of getting them—but then, by nature, he appreciates having the truth be a solid thing in his grasp, rather than a possibility. Maybe an uncomfortable dinner was worth that price.

Oh, speaking of prices.

“Also, Yui? The money, if you will.”

Yui turns towards Midori. “It’s… you know where I put it, right?”

“No,” Jade says, before Midori can even move. “You can get it yourself.”

“I don’t see why it—”

“I spent twenty years having your husband pawn every menial task he could off to me. I’m not going to watch you do the same to your daughter.”

Yui gapes for a second, but the words eventually have their intended effect of making her get to her feet. Was that cruel? Perhaps. Does Jade care? Not really. Within five minutes he’s gone, leaving with a bag of a frankly absurd amount of cash, and a promise that he’ll get in touch with Midori again later, on better terms.

Mythra is, of course, waiting for him outside.

“Everything good?” she asks him. He holds up the bag of cash in response. The emotion bleed sings slightly embarrassed—likely that it slipped her mind before she left—but Jade doesn’t bother bringing attention to that. “Also hey I know you just left, but I was thinking about pawning Yui out of that wine—”

“Consider instead,” Jade interjects, as he shifts the money to his schoolbag, which he brought for this express purpose, “we break in this stash of money by buying our own wine, and then I can get a kind I actually like.”

“Oh, you know what, that’s a better idea.”

They start walking. The sun set a few hours ago, but living in a university town means that the streets are lit well enough at night. Jade takes a second to consider his watch for the time. Not that they’re in any hurry to get home (their schedules are free for the night, of course), but…

“The ice cream place should still be open by the time we reach there, if you—”

“Of course I do.”

“That’s what I thought.”

The walk to the streetcar takes around ten minutes, and the streetcar ride into the market another ten. They don’t talk much, but then, they both have a lot of thinking to do. Jade rolls the conversations of the night around in his head, considering them but not coming to any new conclusions. His mind keeps circling around _twenty years,_ though he tries not to let it circle too much. The streetcar isn’t exactly the place to leak ether everywhere. This mostly results in him not thinking much at all, hand on his bag just to make sure it isn’t going anywhere.

When they get off the streetcar at the market, Jade finds himself wishing he had taken the time _earlier_ to count out some cash so he wasn’t doing it in the middle of the street. No pickpockets accost them, at least, leaving him to hand Mythra enough money for ice cream and stash money for alcohol in his pocket so he’s not digging around in his bag in the middle of the grocery. They split up, though the stores are only a few blocks apart.

( _Jade puts some of the ether he’s leaking to use by feeding it to Mythra—not as easy without physical contact, but he really only wants to send her enough that she can keep their ice cream from melting before he gets a chance to eat his. That task is simple enough, especially after twenty years._ )

“That’s not wine,” Mythra says, eyeing the bottle of whiskey Jade bought when they reconvene.

“And?” Jade asks. He’s always preferred whiskey, anyway.

“Did you at least buy the most expensive kind you could?” Mythra asks.

It’s not a matter of taste, but of pettiness, which means:

“Who do you take me for,” Jade replies, grinning.

Mythra hands Jade his ice cream, and he takes it, though he refrains from attempting to eat it right now. Ice cream is not something easily eaten while walking, especially since his other hand is occupied holding a bottle of whiskey. Mythra doesn’t wait, of course, but _she_ has a hand free to handle a spoon. No doubt she got what she always gets; coffee-flavored ice cream topped with hot fudge and sprinkles, at least, along with various other toppings depending on the day. Difficult to tell what else she tossed on it while they’re walking, but Jade thinks he spies cookie crumbs and chocolate chips. He can’t blame her for wanting to take a bite now. Hot fudge does not exactly wait, ice ether or no.

They make their way to a park that’s empty this time of night; late enough no families would be here, early enough the drunk college students aren’t out yet. There’s a picnic table they sit at often, and it’s there that they go. Mythra sits on the table, her feet resting on the connected bench. This time, Jade joins her, mirroring the action.

He sets his ice cream aside to open the whiskey first, taking a drink straight from the bottle. It _does_ taste good—perhaps not quite good enough to justify the price, but spending Citan’s money on frivolous things is always worth it in his book. And he’s glad to have the alcohol, besides. He passes the bottle to Mythra for a drink.

“Mm,” is her first reaction, like she’s considering. She takes a second drink. “Actually, that’s pretty good.”

“Not sweet enough for you?” Jade guesses, and Mythra sticks her tongue out at him in protest, though he’s right.

“After that conversation, I honestly would drink anything to get more wasted than I am right now,” she says.

“I mean, same,” Jade agrees, taking a bite of his ice cream. Teaberry flavored; bright pink and tasting of wintergreen. “I don’t want to think about the fact he had me for twenty years.”

He doesn’t look at Mythra, but he can feel her gaze on him. She nudges him, finally, her knee bonking his knee.

“Hey, he’s been dead for twenty-two,” she counters, bright.

“That’s true.”

Another bite of ice cream, another drink of whiskey to wash it down.

“You know,” he says, as he stares out at the street, letting the buildings blur to unfocused eyes. “I’m not sure we could possibly get any more peak college student than this.”

“We- mm- we could,” Mythra argues, around a mouthful of ice cream. “It could be 3 A.M., and we have a test tomorrow morning, but here we are drinking shitty beer because fuck it.” She laughs. “But you’re right—we should do stuff like this more often.”

“Should we preface it with another awkward dinner?”

“Absolutely not.”

He turns to her to see the extremely unamused look she’s leveling at him, and then laughs.

“Seriously, though,” Mythra moans, reaching for the whiskey. “Midori’s fine, but I never want to see her mom again. Fuck her.”

Jade waits until she’s done taking her drink to speak. “Any particular reason you want to complain about?” he asks. He suspects Mythra’s reasons will be different than his—especially because he does not think he will ever feel strongly about Yui at all. He isn’t keen on interacting with her again, of course, but his mild annoyance pales against Mythra’s vehement frustration.

“Just—” Mythra begins, face scrunching up. She buys time by eating a few bites of ice cream. “I’m mad for you,” she says, finally, foot tapping against the bench. “Like—I get it. But I’m still mad for you. I spend so much of my life mad for you, I think.”

Jade turns to her, staring for a moment—not that he’s _surprised,_ of course. They’ve been in resonance for twenty years, he has a pretty good idea of how much Mythra loves him. It just winds him, every now and then. The reminder that so much of her genuine anger occurs because _he’s_ been threatened or wronged somehow. She catches him looking, blushes faintly, but continues, valiantly:

“You deserved better! Don’t give me that look, you _did._ And it’s not—fair.”

“What isn’t?” Jade asks, a little lost.

Mythra blushes again and, oh. The emotion bleed sings in a way that makes that little ember of an ugly feeling in Mythra’s chest apparent again. “I know we had each other,” she begins, seeming to struggle for the words, either from embarrassment or the concept being difficult. “But it’s not… the same.”

“We had your parents,” Jade argues. And Anna, technically, as much as Anna could help by the time Citan had his hands on Mythra, which wasn’t much. But she tried before that. Jade wishes, not for the first time, that any of the gag gifts she’d gotten for him survived.

( _As for Myyah, well… Best not dwell on her._ )

Mythra shakes her head. “That’s not the same,” she says, “because they were just as trapped as we were. They helped, yes,” she insists before Jade can protest, “but that’s not the same as— _Architect,_ she went out of her way to make sure Midori stayed away from him and it _worked_ and look at how much better off Midori is for it!”

With sudden clarity, Jade realizes what that little ember of ugly in Mythra’s core is, because it’s—it’s twenty-two years back, watching Flynn smile at Hubert and wishing he had a driver that kind. It’s envy.

“Mythra…” he says, just to say it. He cannot condemn her jealousy, but he does not know how to soothe it, either.

She grumbles, exaggerated, attempts to stab at her ice cream. “I’m just—I’m mad for you. I’m so mad for you. I know she probably couldn’t have done anything for you but it’s not _fair._ ”

That hangs in the air for a while. Mythra’s apparently content enough to leave it at that, or, maybe just content to fume on it while she finishes shoveling ice cream into her face. Jade isn’t quite sure how to respond, or rather, not quite certain he needs to. It’s objectively _not_ fair, but nothing about his resonance with Citan was, and he’s not one to cry over spilt milk, so to speak.

He takes a drink of the overpriced whiskey, then passes the bottle to Mythra. While she drinks, he bumps his knee against hers.

He doesn’t say he appreciates her concern, not aloud. She smiles like she understands.

The silence from there is companionable, full; not of tension, but of something kinder, safer. Jade reflects that might be the alcohol talking, and cuts the both of them off so they aren’t too drunk to find their way back home, especially considering the significant stash of money he currently has on him.

“How do you feel about going home for spring break?” Jade asks, after a while. “I know we hadn’t been planning on it, but…”

Mythra laughs in the precise way she only does when mostly drunk. “What brought this on?”

“I’m not saying our apartment isn’t safe, but I would feel better if at least some of this money was back home with Malik.”

“You just miss him.”

“Don’t you?”

“Yeah but not—never mind.”

One of these days Jade will press her on what she means when she talks like that. If he wasn't mostly on his way to being drunk, he would tonight.

“I mean if you want to go,” Mythra is saying. “It’s not like I mind.”

“Do you think we should ask Midori if she wants to come?”

“I’m- _sorry_?”

“Well,” Jade begins, but has to admit to himself he didn’t think that thought any further through.

“Is there- do you have a _reason_ you want her to come? Like, we can just invite her over for dinner at our place just as easy—”

“I want her to meet Malik.”

“Jade, holy shit,” Mythra says, in That Tone again. Jade looks at her, baffled, but she just shakes her head and hops to her feet. “Look. I’m not. Why don’t we talk about this when we’re both sober, huh?”

“That’s fair,” Jade relents, and gets to his feet as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some notes about this one
> 
> > intially conceptualized as just Jade and Yui... about a year ago, before Mythra was in the picture. obviously things have changed a lot since then. do love Midori just casually being a college professor, though
> 
> > Midori and Yui _are_ in fact characters that exist in Xenogears. Citan does canonically have a wife and daughter! Midori is also, within Xenogears, canonically psychic!!! of course the fact they both are barely mentioned is mostly just bad/rushed writing, but along with [gestures at Citan's other nonsense] it tracks that he just doesn't care much about either of them. rip! (canonical Citan nonsense has been chronicled by the Dark Id's text lp in one post! [read it](https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-\(by-The-Dark-Id\)/Citan/), it's honestly hilarious.)
> 
> > it never came up in the fic but it's worth noting that Uzuki was Yui's last name. Husbands taking their wife's names is apparently not that weird in Japan, but it bears mentioning and yes i am sad that i never got to use dialogue i drafted for this fic on the matter
> 
> > "hey 50mil gald is a lot of money??" 1) gald is yen so it's actually only about 500k USD 2) i did the math. _having at least a million USD in savings was well within the realms of believability, given Citan's job_. military salaries are whack. also it's MY fictional universe so i decide the prices of college, buying a house, etc, and all are actually affordable instead of (getures at US' capitalist hellhole) so that 500k will easily carry Jade and Mythra through the next several decades
> 
> > it bears repeating, i suppose, that ywkon tech is centered around 1940s-50s. (computers are more advanced because military funding, but they're also only military use!) please don't ask me how nothing has advanced in a hundred years. also don't worry about cars not existing
> 
> > i don't know shit about sports but i knew sports should probably exist in this world lol. Aly helped me hammer ideas and instantly pegged Mythra as a soccer player, which I am immensely grateful for.
> 
> > aera suggested [teaberry](https://billypenn.com/2019/07/10/why-is-teaberry-ice-cream-the-most-searched-flavor-in-pennsylvania/) for Jade's fave ice cream flavor and, it was perfect. she also said Mythra's fave alcohol is ice wine and i'm mad about the pun and the fact it fits (ice wine is notoriously sweet)
> 
> > yes the chapter title is a pun
> 
> > finally Nael posted a fic this morning ft Asch showing up post ywkon2 and talking to Jade&Mythra, and it referenced the Midori fic a few times. so if you read that and you were confused, now you aren't! if you haven't read it, [you should!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29291073)


	2. birthday boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jade celebrates his birthday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> celebrate your own birthday by writing your favorite character celebrating his, I guess? actually tbqh i went "haha what if i--" and then immediatley had dialogue thoughts so. ha.

Though they often deal in gifts, they rarely deal in wrapping, so it’s no real surprise to Jade when Mythra slides a mug down the bar towards where Jade is sitting. “Happy Birthday!” she calls, and he smiles, picking the mug up to examine it.

Custom and plain, with the words _‘Second Worst Driver’_ plastered on the side. Jade’s smile becomes a laugh as he considers it. Mythra slides over to be next to him, leaning on the bar.

“I couldn’t decide on anything sentimental so I went for the gag gift,” Mythra explains.

“Which is also sentimental, I see,” Jade says, raising his eyebrows at her. He knows the joke. It’s been their favorite for years.

Mythra blushes, emotion bleed sparking fond. “Which is _also_ sentimental,” she allows, but she’s grinning. Jade laughs more, and sets the mug back down on the bar. Mythra tilts her head as she considers him, still smiling wild. “How you feeling, birthday boy?”

“Fond, mostly,” Jade answers, honestly. “Thank you.”

Mythra nudges his ankle with her own. “Love you,” she says, brightly. He sends his love back to her across the emotion bleed; grateful to have her, her light in his life, her insistence on celebrating even the little things.

Blades do not typically celebrate birthdays, after all.

Though, Jade supposes, the date they chose was not exactly insignificant, either.

“How long has it been?” he asks, as if he doesn’t know, hasn’t counted every day.

“Thirty-two years,” Mythra answers, proudly.

“Thirty-two years!” Jade echoes. And then, because they’re already this far into it: “Malik,” he calls towards the kitchen. “Can you get the whiskey?”

Malik pokes his head out, with a frustrated groan. “Do you _have_ to do the toast now? Can’t it happen over cake, like it’s meant to?” Jade shoots him a look and Malik sighs, moving out of the kitchen.

While Malik fetches the alcohol, Jade takes care of his part of the ritual; three shot glasses made purely of ice—crude, but serviceable, and getting better with each year he does it. Not to mention cheaper than replacing shot glasses every year, by a considerable amount.

He lines them up, and Malik pours the whiskey, and they each pick up their glass.

“To truth,” Mythra says, raising hers.

“To justice,” Jade responds, raising his. It is not the usual routine, but he knows how to follow it. Love resounds between the two of them in the emotion bleed, amplifying to higher and higher decibels with each echo.

In perfect unison, they say: “To freedom,” knock the shots back, and swiftly smash the glasses against the floor.

“Congrats, both of you,” Malik says a second later, taking his shot. He sets his glass on the bar and then flicks it so it slides across and falls carelessly to the ground. It doesn’t quite shatter, but Mythra’s heel takes care of that.

“Thank you,” Jade replies, shooting Malik a smile. Mythra goes to fetch something to clean the shattered ice up, which is her part of the ritual. She wouldn’t make the birthday boy work, after all. Not on his birthday.

Malik returns to the kitchen. Jade slides off of his barstool to fetch himself a drink, taking the mug Mythra gifted him with him.

Mythra pauses when she spots him; or rather, what he’s pouring into his mug. “What are you doing?” she asks.

“Breaking the mug in.”

“With whiskey?”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?” Jade replies, his smile wide. “It _is_ my birthday.”

Mythra rolls her eyes at him and continues about her task of cleaning ice up off the floor before it melts and causes trouble. Jade wonders if she regrets, sometimes, insisting he pick a birthdate for himself, considering how much mileage he gets out of it as an excuse.

(He really, really doubts she does, though.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> misc thoughts
> 
> \- i know Jade's birthdate specifically but i'm too lazy to want to double check it tonight. probably easy to guess what it is without having the specific date (which i have not mentioned anywhere else anyway) attached
> 
> \- "isn't that an op extension of Jade's ice powers" he made a true-to-life ice sculpture of Malik after being left alone in the snow and given 30 minutes in Weird Soup. come on. this is nothing.
> 
> \- [my very first soup fanart](https://rarmaster.tumblr.com/post/621116178607357952/sometimes-u-only-draw-obscure-shit-for-your) (drawn before i started writing any Jade&Mythra content) finally comes true!


End file.
